


Riddle's Court

by madalaine



Category: Poetry - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 06:21:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20848919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madalaine/pseuds/madalaine
Summary: Two pieces of poetic prose on two women of Riddle's Court, Edinburgh.





	1. The Spinster, then

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Free write

The spinster is seen at the street corner, she is part of a mass. The city is pulsing with women like her, women whose hands could never be gentle—they were raised to be rough. Men in hats that cost more than her life walk past and spit at her feet. She ignores them and offers her pins and salts, a desperate communion, as her shawl slips from her shoulders.

There is a thousand of her in this street. A thousand wailing hearts. They were born in the gutter and they will die there too—this is the fate of the spinster girls. Her skull aches with all her disallowed thoughts, her eyes feel bulging with them too. She dreams of a house with a fire and food. She knows it will never be true.

Her mother had loved her but despised her the same. To her mother she was the embodiment of entrapment. Her father’s only sweet words were to the rim of a beer jug. When she could think she knew this was her future. She was born to be what birthed her or die empty and alone. Many women are the same, yet somehow she feels foreign in this bustling mile.

She coughs into a vile handkerchief. Her throat dyed black by Auld Reekie’s breathes. She inhales the scent of a city evolving, the air her medicine, and pretends that the city won’t leave her kind behind.


	2. The Girl, Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Developed free writing.

Here the air is tangible. Listen to her and she and we. The air is the preservation of those girls and women, the ones here before. You are so lucky to know her story. Let them speak, your hand is not on your body. 

So the men are in the ceiling and the walls and the books but the women fill the gaps and keep the riddle untold. This is a court for his unspoken crime. Bring your man up, hang him with time. He may come here and praise the wooden windows but she will be here, she will always come back. This is not a history for him. This is a history for her, for you, girl.

How will you let her out? There is a spinster in your school girl clothes, a servant in your boots, a queen in your height, a restorer of voice in youR hand.

Act, girl! The world is your stage.

Let her be heard.


End file.
